You Who Sees Everything Yet Nothing
by CatOfMisfortune
Summary: "How peculiar... this feeling of longing" About a year after the forth shinobi world war Shino's father approaches him with a strange question.


[Note: Hello hello! Finally updated something! Hopefully next time it won't be an edit like this one! [not that other people would notice])

My father asked me something I never thought I'd hear.

"Shino, have you gotten a girlfriend yet?"

I was just finished preparing for a mission, when I heard him ask me that. I initially thought it was part of my imagination, but I wasn't sure so I asked him: "what did you say, father?"

"Well, son, you're at the age where people tend to start getting into romantic relationships..." He trailed off, as if not sure what to say. Why was he even saying this in the first place? We already had the talk of the "birds and the bees", but he had never questioned me if I had any romantic interests. This was unusual for him. Was he sprayed by pesticides again? No, if he was I would have known. If he were to be sprayed by pesticides, the normally calm and quiet man would become so aggravated that he would swear angrily while telling the world about it, and quite loudly too. What happened to make him say this? I think I should get out of this conversation.

"Father, with all due respect, I don't believe that now it the time to be talking about that. The reason being is that I'm going on a mission so-"

"Aright, we'll talk about this when you get back if possible."

I agreed with this, and went on my way to the village gate. On my way there, I couldn't stop speculating as to why my father had asked me about my relationship status. Unfortunately my thoughts didn't get me anywhere at all, and with that realization, my thoughts shifted to the mission. Hinata, Kiba, two exROOT members named Daisuke Haruki and Akane Kimihiro, and myself were assigned to investigate the disappearance of Misaki Umio.

Misaki Umio, the daughter of a very influential man in Itsuki village, went missing overnight after having an argument with her father about a boy. Due to signs of a struggle there is concern that she may have been kidnapped; however, there is the possibility that it was staged to look like it. Hinata, Kiba, and I are here to determine if the evidence left behind is legitimate and to get a track on her sent. While Akane and Daisuke came for "precautionary reasons" should somehow Hinata, Kiba, and myself become unable to complete the mission.

In regards of the two exRoot members, I have been lucky to have met Daisuke's acquaintance after the fourth shinobi war which happened about two years ago. We shared a hospital room while we were recovering from a bar fight after consuming too much alcohol... which I had somehow taken part of. Supposedly Kiba had slipped me some alcohol out of curiosity on how I would react, then I had somehow gotten into a fight with Daisuke. I don't remember all the details to be honest. Daisuke had been part of the trio involving Akane and a boy named Hideki Katsuo, and all three of them are about two years older than us. Daisuke is a handsome, tall, broad shouldered, young man with dark brownish red hair (similar to the color of dried blood, but I wish I had a different metephor), and green eyes. Normally someone from ROOT would be described as an emotionless weapon; however that wasn't the case with him. My opinion of Daisuke is a rather high one, he's serious when he should be, but overall fairly carefree. He also had this bright confidence about him that remained with him even when he was on a gurney. It's something I can appreciate and respect in a person. Although, I think the best thing about him was that he never seemed to be disturbed by my insects the first time he saw them coming out of the pores of my skin.

I haven't met Akane, but from what I hear about her from Daisuke is that she is a fairly relaxed and quiet girl who loves to observe nature in her own way. By "observing nature in her own way" I really do mean it like that. Daisuke told me that rather than observing with her eyes, she "feels" how nature moves and breathes or something similar to that. He said that her primary sense would be either her sense of touch or hearing rather than sight. I'm supposing that this implied that she's blind. Although this could just mean that she's like Kiba who's primary sense is scent and has perfectly fine vision. I don't like to assume that someone is handicapped based off of what someone else said about a person. However, I may be overthinking that. Also, she's supposed to be an extremely talented medical ninja. Hideki I haven't met either, but Daisuke tells me that he's "very cute" and that he looks like a girl, but to never say that to him otherwise he'll get really upset.

When I finally got to the gates, I saw Hinata, Kiba, and a girl that had short, dark, wavy hair, who I assume could be Akane. Hinata was the first to spot me.

"Ah, Shino!" Hinata called and waved at me, and then the other girl faced my direction. She wore a visor that obscured her eyes, so I wouldn't be able to tell if she was looking directly at me, or just the air around me.

"Aburame...Shino?"

"Yes, that is my name, and you are Ms. Kimihiro?"

"Yes." She replied and dipped her head.

I noticed how small she was. She was about a foot, or more, shorter than me, and her form was small for someone who should be 20 years old or so. I wondered if everyone said that she was the older than us so that we wouldn't think lowly of her if we knew she was younger. It made sense, but I couldn't help but say to her:

"You're rather small aren't you?"

I heard a very faint crackling noise.

Next thing I knew, I have this horrible pain in my bottom jaw, I'm staring at the sky, and my glasses seem to have been knocked a little out of place. I heard Kiba laughing and Akamaru whine, most likely at what had just happened. I believed I had received an uppercut to the jaw from Akane for calling her small. I know that it was rude of me, but I truly could not help myself this time. Perhaps Kiba is rubbing off on me.

"Shino are you ok?!" Hinata asked as she held out her hand. _Oh Hinata, you're too kind._ I quickly readjust my glasses into place and take her hand to stand up.

"I'll be fine. She didn't cause any significant damage."

"I get the feeling that you caused some major damage!" another male voice laughed. I looked over to see Daisuke walking over to us.

"Daisuke, you're late again" Akane scolded him, folding her arms. But he ignored her and petted her on the head.

"Geeeeez man, you're brutal. You shouldn't call someone small even if it's true. Speaking of which, Aka' you don't need to hurt the guy just because he called you small. You normally never care about stuff like that."

Akane swatted away Daisuke's hands, "The point is that it's rude to point it out" she sighed and started running her hands through her hair and then pulling it back into a very short pony tail with her hands and let it go. I suddenly recalled the phrase "failure to thrive" and hoped that it wasn't the case.

". . . I'm sorry; it wasn't my place to say that to you." I dipped my head slightly at her.

"Alright, just don't point out things like that to other people again," she sighed. The dark-auburn haired boy laughed, and then started saying his greetings to the rest of us and shaking hands. When he got to me I said,

"It's good to see that you're always in good spirits," when I shook his hand, and with a strange discomfort he nodded.

"It's okay if you've forgotten who I am, a lot of people tend to do so," I told him. I was so used to people forgetting about me, I just assumed that he did. He is a good person, but no one is ever perfect. His discomfort seemed stranger when he nodded again and apologized. Then Akane lightly kicked him in the back of the leg.

"It isn't you, Mr. Aburame, Daisuke just happens to have a very bad memory," she said firmly as if to establish it as a fact only to him, "although you were able to leave an impression on him well enough that he knows that he met you, so don't feel too upset at him."

She then firmly shook Daisuke's hand, continuing to talk, "even I, his teammate, need to remind him that we work together."

Daisuke's discomfort had risen at her words, (though I would suppose the correct term in this sense really should be embarrassment, but that didn't seem right, so I'll continue to call it discomfort) so he said, "hey, that hurts you know?"

She let go of his hand, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean for that to hurt. Was I squeezing too hard?"

"I'm pretty sure he was talking about what you were saying," Kiba mumbled under his breath.

Daisuke rubbed his hands together, perhaps to humor her, as she pulled her hair back again.

Then I heard another faint crackling sound.


End file.
